


Feels Just Like Home (Extracts)

by MPantrochilles



Series: Small, and a little bit broken [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families being cute, Fluff, It's not all sunshine and flowers but most of the time it is, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-11 11:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11713449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MPantrochilles/pseuds/MPantrochilles
Summary: Bonus chapters for 'Feels Just Like Home'.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So a couple of people asked for bonus chapters, and I wanted to write in some scenes but I didn't think they fit in with the story so here they are! I don't know how many there are going to be, but I hope you enjoy all the same!

Matt notices something’s wrong when Steve comes to pick him up instead of Bucky. He has tried to persuade them to let him take the train, but they tell him it’s faster to drive, and _really, they don’t mind at all._

“It’s Wednesday,” Matt says by way of greeting, as if Steve doesn’t already know. Wednesday is therapy day for Steve. The only other time Steve picked him up on a Wednesday was the first day back at school.

“You look tired, Mr Rogers.” MJ has barely looked up from her book, but she’s right. He’s pale and his shoulders are sagging and he’s not flashing a billion-dollar smile like he usually does when he picks them up from school.

“You want a lift home or not, kid?” Steve tries to tease, but it comes out a little terser than he probably intended. Not that MJ notices.

“Not if you’re too tired- I can get the bus, like a normal person.”

“Nonsense,” Steve insists, opening the car door and ushering them in.

Steve doesn’t ask his usual slew of questions on the drive to MJ’s, so they fill the silence themselves as well as they can. As usual, it dissolves into friendly dispute- Matt only knows Steve is paying attention because of the occasional laugh or snort at a particularly witty rebuke.

“Remind me _why_ we’re friends again?” Matt asks MJ, with a roll of his eyes, and she shrugs.

“We have the same last name, so we were sat next to each other in homeroom, and you decided to talk to me.”

“More fool me,” Matt grumbles, hunkering down into his seat in a huff. Steve gives him a _look_ in the mirror, like he’s trying to ask if that’s how you’d treat a lady. Matt holds his tongue because _she started it_ will not go down too well.

Steve doesn’t start driving home until he’s sure MJ is safely in her house with the door shut behind her. It’s only then that Matt brings up the fact that it’s a Wednesday, and on Wednesday’s Bucky comes to pick him up. Not that he minds that Steve is there, but the two of them run a tight ship, and the order of things is not usually disturbed.

When Steve pulls over on some random residential street and shuts the engine off, Matt knows something is very, seriously wrong.

“Climb into the front seat, so I can talk to you properly,” Steve asks, and Matt does as told without question. The slam of the car door is unnecessarily loud.

“Is Bucky okay?” It’s a stupid question to ask, and Matt already knows that the answer is _no,_ but a small, childish part of him wants to hear _yes, it’s all fine, we just decided to change the routine we so stringently stick to for the sake of our sanity because that’s what we’re used to as military men, and because it’s helpful for coping with everyone’s PTSD, for fun!_

Steve is quiet for way too long, so Matt’s mind runs away with him. Logically, he knows Bucky doesn’t go on missions without Steve, even if Steve goes without Bucky (though that is a rare occasion) but his _unhelpful_ brain brings up images of Bucky dead at the scene, Bucky in a coma in hospital, Bucky bloody and beaten and-

“Buck- Bucky’s having a bad day,” Steve says evenly, and he’s not looking at Matt.

Fuck.

The hollow feeling in his chest has stayed, but the cause has changed. _Bad days_ mean days when the soldier comes back, or rather, when Bucky has to fight him off more than usual. Matt knows about bad days, but he hasn’t seen one yet. He doesn’t know if this is better or worse than the scenarios he’d thought of.

“Nina-” Matt doesn’t really know which question he’s going to ask. Where is she? How did she get home? Is she okay to be staying at home with Bucky if he’s not well?

“Freddie dropped Nina home. It’s not so bad,” Steve fills in the gaps, like he knew what questions Matt was going to ask. There’s definitely an unspoken _yet_ that neither of them want to add.

“If it gets really bad,” Matt’s mouth has gone so dry, his tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. “If it gets really bad, what happens?”

“You and Nina will go and stay with Natasha until the coast is clear,” Steve tells him. “It’s better if you guys don’t see,” he sighs, “the soldier.”

Matt feels more than a little bit guilty for the fear at the pit of his stomach. He shouldn’t be scared of Bucky, not when it’s not Bucky’s mind in his head, Bucky wouldn’t ever hurt him, he promised-

“Are you going to be okay?” He asks, and Steve seems a little perplexed by the question- like it’s never occurred to him that he’s allowed to be affected too.

“Don’t you worry about me, kid, I’ll be fine.” Steve’s reassuring smile and squeeze of his shoulder are a little weak for Matt to fully believe him. Probably because Steve doesn’t believe it himself.

When they get home, even the air feels oppressive. Matt decides, then and there, that he hates it. Nina is curled up in the window seat, chewing on the end of a pen as she stares intently at a crossword- she’s got one hand on a page at the back of the book, meaning she’s looking at the answers.

“Matty!” She calls out when she’s finally noticed him, and Matt’s eyes immediately dart to Bucky’s in the kitchen. He’s filling a vase in the sink, though the sudden noise has made him tense.

He’s not wearing a shirt, like he’s preparing to throw off his metal arm at any given second. The harness across his shoulder’s his clear, and makes it look like his skin is shining- on any other day, perhaps the arm would be cool- but right now, it’s making Matt’s gut clench in fear.

“Hey there, Little Bird,” Matt practically whispers, kneeling down so he can give her a proper hug. Steve is next to Bucky, though they aren’t touching, which is extremely disconcerting. 

“We picked flowers today at lunch with Freddie,” Nina informs him, pointing at Bucky and the massive bouquet he’s trying to arrange in the vase. It’s not as artful as Steve, perhaps, but beautiful all the same.

“They’re beautiful,” Matt tears his eyes away from Bucky so he can fully pay attention to Nina. She waves at Steve when he looks over, and he tiredly waves back.

“Papa said to stay out of the kitchen today,” Nina whispers to Matt as she hugs him again, and Matt squeezes her tighter.

It’s only when they’ve settled in the window seat again that Bucky comes over to say hi, Steve following him like a shadow.

“Hey, Matt,” he says tightly, like he’s in a lot of pain and desperately trying not to show it. Matt gulps.

“Hi Bucky.”

“How was your day at school?” The question is slow and monotonous, and Bucky still hasn’t put the vase down on the coffee table like Matt thought he would- like his brain can’t handle more than one action at a time, or he’s completely forgotten what he was in the living room to do. _Part of PTSD is flashbacks, loss of time, panic attacks, and other time disruptor activities that leaves a person bewildered and wondering what they were doing-_ that’s what the website had said.

Goldstein had taken him to the side after the first short session, had explained PTSD, but he’d done his own research by then.

“It was okay- everyone’s a bit crazy because Homecoming is next week-”

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say.

Bucky’s face contorted, and his mouth twisted like someone had burned him, and his metal hand that was holding the vase rose so it was by his head. Like he was about to throw it.

Matt dives across to cover Nina before he even has time to think. He’s holding her close to his body and instinctually, she’s clinging to him. He puts a hand behind her head so she can’t turn to look at Bucky, even when he does- she only hears the smash of the vase against the wall.

By a sniper’s standards, it missed them by miles. By anyone else’s, it’s way too close for comfort.

Matt realises as he looks at Bucky that he’s looking at the Soldier- his mouth is a thin line and his eyes are blank and uncaring, and it’s only at Steve’s voice that gets rid of that look.

“Buck, please.” He’s begging, and his hands are clenched by his sides like it’s paining him to keep them there. Steve looks so broken, and it’s as jarring as Bucky’s red-rimmed eyes.

 It’s added to the list of things Matt never wants to see again, but knows he will.

Bucky comes back to himself almost as quickly as he became the soldier. His chest heaves with a shuddering breath and his expression changes to one of horror as he looks from Matt and Nina to the broken vase on the floor.

There’s a rapidly darkening patch on the carpet, and there’s petals removed from their flower heads strewn across the floor.

Bucky staggers back and reaches for the two of them simultaneously, and he looks so _confused_ and so _wounded_ that Matt wants to go to him. But he stays where he is, Nina clutched tightly to his chest. His eyes dart between Bucky, Steve and the door, and Bucky must notice because he makes a choked sound.

“I am so sorry,” he whispers, and he’s breathing hard and focusing on Matt and Nina as he pulls off his arm, carefully placing it on the coffee table like a morbid centrepiece in place of the flower vase. He moves backwards, like he’s headed for his bedroom and Matt barely remembers how to breathe.

“Papa?” Nina pulls away from Matt, and before he can stop her, she’s looking over his shoulder at Bucky. Matt does not miss Steve moving very slowly towards them.

“ _Are you okay?”_ Matt has picked up enough Russian to know what she’s asking.

Bucky whimpers and collapses into the doorframe.

“Oh, _moi malenkiye,”_ Bucky flinches at the Russian, like he didn’t mean for it to leave his mouth, “ _miei cari,_ I am so sorry. _”_

“We have to go,” Steve says quietly, and he’s guiding Matt and Nina toward the front door, blocking Bucky from sight, but Matt can hear him stumbling into the bedroom.

“Papa!” Nina screams, and it’s so loud it makes Matt’s ears ring.

“Nina, no!” Matt hisses, but Nina ignores him.

“Papa! Daddy I don’t want to go- Daddy- Papa!”

There’s a growl from further inside the apartment that makes Matt’s blood run cold.

“Get them out of here!”

Natasha is already outside when Steve opens the door, and she readily takes a wriggling, wailing Nina from Matt.

“Natasha-” Steve says her name like a thank you and an apology all at once.

“Just _go_ ,” she says sternly, and Steve shuts the door behind them.

They’re half way down the hallway when they hear a crash from inside the apartment.

When they get inside Natasha’s apartment, Bruce is already there. Natasha heads straight for the armchair- Nina’s wailing has turned to whimpers, but she’s inconsolable all the same.

Matt heads straight for the bathroom.

He can hear Bruce calling after him as he falls to his knees with a painful thud, and then there’s only the sound of his retching as he throws up his lunch into the toilet. His hands are shakily gripping the sides of the bowl, and he registers that they’re rapidly fading in and out of visibility- they haven’t done that it a long time.

 _Worthless piece of shit!_ Beth’s voice, followed by the sound of a glass bottle breaking, rattles around his head like a broken record.

He absentmindedly lifts his hand to touch the scar on his temple.

“I got you, Matt, I got you.”

Bruce is suddenly by his side, holding his hair back from his face. When he finally sits back on his heels, breathing heavily through his mouth and nose like he’s been underwater too long, Bruce is poised and ready with a wet cloth to clean Matt’s face. 

“I’m sorry,” Matt croaks out, and he can feel his face flushing with shame and embarrassment. He doesn’t need help. He doesn’t deserve help.

Bruce just shakes his head, like he knows Matt won’t hear a word of whatever he says.

Matt has to lunge for the toilet to vomit again.

Eventually, he stands on shaky legs, with Bruce’s help.

“There’s an overnight bag in the spare room for you.” Matt just nods. Natasha keeps one for him and Nina, just in case of emergencies.

He can hear Natasha singing Russian lullabies to Nina as he changes.

Bruce and Natasha make Nina eat dinner, but they don’t question it when he shakes his head, they just pack away the leftovers.

Bruce takes Nina for a bath, and Natasha takes a seat by Matt on the ridiculously plush couch.

“Are you feeling any better?” She asks softly, and Matt scowls.

“I’m not the one that’s sick,” he grinds out. Bucky is the one that people should be fussing over, not him. He only threw up- Bucky is trying to fight off a whole other person in his head. Natasha just purses her lips.

“I never said you were. All I asked was if you felt any better than you did in the half an hour you were vomiting.”

“I do, thank you.”

Nina wants to sleep in Natasha’s bed with her, so Matt is left alone in the spare room. He can hear Natasha and Bruce talking, though it sounds like they’re a million miles away, he’s so deep into his own thoughts.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, Mr Jones.” Matt didn’t know if AI’s could sound sympathetic, but Jarvis did.

“You’ve got eyes on every room in this tower right?”

“Yes, but you can only access a select few.”

“Can you show me Bucky and Steve?”

Jarvis doesn’t respond for a minute, and Matt thinks that maybe he was too quiet, but miraculously, his phone screen lights up like it’s got a notification. When he opens it, he can see Steve sat outside their bedroom, with his hand on the door.

The audio comes as a shock, and he quickly turns it down so even he almost can’t hear it.

“I _threw_ a _vase_ at them Steve,” Bucky all but sobs, and Steve’s entire body seems to be shaking. Matt looks closer, and there’s five little blue bruises on his arm.

“That wasn’t _you_ -”

“I’ve turned into _him._ ”

Steve’s breath hitches and Matt finds his does too. “You are nothing like your father-”

“You saw me!” Bucky screeches, and Matt flinches. “You saw me then and you saw me now! I tried to hurt them like he hurt me! I swore I wouldn’t!”

“Buck that wasn’t you it was the Soldier! You fought him off – the vase didn’t hit them!” Steve yells back, and it’s very quiet for a really long time. At some point, the video changes so Matt is looking at Bucky on the other side of the door.

“I would never hurt our children,” Bucky whispers, leaning his head against the doorframe, and he’s looking directly at the camera, whether he knows it or not.

“No, you would never.”

“I love them,” he says, and it sounds more like defiance than confession.

There’s a split second where Bucky’s body twists and his head rolls back, and the video cuts out entirely.

It’s only then that Matt realises he’s been crying.

 

Matt watches the surveillance of Steve and Bucky whenever he gets the chance, whenever Bucky is more himself than the soldier, though he doesn’t let Nina see. She’s only little, after all- she shouldn’t have to see her parents like that.

Natasha doesn’t make either of them go to school- instead, she takes them to the park, and lets them eat ridiculous amounts of junk food, and watch all the movies they want- which would be great if he and Nina didn’t feel so _shit._ Nina only speaks in English when she absolutely has to, the rest of the time it’s Russian and even then, it’s only if she can’t communicate what she wants with hand signals.

She’s curled up in Matt’s lap in an arm chair when she says the first non-functional words to him since they left their apartment.

“I miss Daddy and Papa,” she says quietly, and it’s so sorrowful Matt feels his heart break.

“I miss them too,” he whispers back, dropping a kiss on her head and turning his face away so she can’t see that he’s got tears in his eyes.

_Boys don’t cry._

She rests her tiny hand on his chest, just above his heart, and buries her face in the crook of his neck, and all he can do is hold her tight.

“It’s not fair,” she mumbles, and Matt swallows the lump in his throat. It’s not fair that two of the best people he’s ever met have to deal with this shit; that their baby girl has to know that her parents aren’t invincible, that even after everything this family, _his_ family, has been through, they can’t catch a break.

“Fairs are for tourists, kid,” he says with a shrug, in a poor imitation of Bucky, but it earns him a sniffle which might just be a laugh.

 

Steve comes to visit them when he can, whether it’s for five minutes or two hours, and Nina leaps into his arms every time.

Steve is crouching by the front door, and hugging Nina close when his eyes meet Matt’s. He gets to his feet, rubbing Nina’s back in constant soothing circles, but he doesn’t take a step towards Matt.

“How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better,” he shrugs, and tries for a smile but he doesn’t quite manage it. The look he gets from Steve isn’t sympathetic, it’s empathetic- there’s no pity mixed in.

With slightly less enthusiasm than Nina, he hurries over to wrap his arms around Steve, who shifts Nina in his arms so he can pat Matt on the back as well.

“Papa said to tell you he loves you very much,” Steve’s voice breaks a little as he talks, and it takes Matt a moment to realise Steve is talking to both of them. “I love you very much.”

“I love you too,” Nina instantly replies, and Matt there’s a crushing weight on Matt’s chest and a constricting force around his throat that’s barely letting him breathe, let alone talk, so he just leans into Steve and nods.

 

They’re only allowed to go home on the evening of day two, when Steve comes to get them. He carries Nina back, and Matt stays stuck to his side as close as he possibly could be without hindering any movement.

When they open the front door, Nina immediately wiggles out of Steve’s arms and races into the living room, where Bucky’s on the couch, wrapped up in a mountain of blankets. He wrestles free- with only one arm, the metal one is nowhere to be seen.

“Papa?” Nina asks cautiously, staying two feet away from Bucky, and it’s almost worse than outright rejection. Bucky swallows hard and reaches out his hand for Nina to take if she wants.

“It’s me, baby, it’s me.”

Nina doesn’t take his hand, but climbs up onto the sofa next to him and puts her tiny hands on his cheeks.

“The Soldier scared me,” she says matter-of-factly, and Bucky covers her hands with his.

“I am so sorry, my love-”

“It wasn’t you, it was him, so he should say sorry,” Nina nods, and Bucky looks up to the ceiling with a watery smile before looking back at her.

“How right you are, sweetheart, how right you are.”

Nina leans forward so their foreheads are touching, and brushes her nose against his. When she settles down next to Bucky, he turns to look at Matt.

“I-”

“Do you speak Italian?” Matt asks, and he’s not really sure where the question comes from, but he knows he doesn’t want to have the conversation that was coming right now.

“Well, I mean, I can-” Bucky stutters, and there’s the quiet sounds of Steve doing…something in the kitchen.

“No, I mean do _you_ speak Italian?” _Did you know how when you were just Bucky Barnes and no one else?_

“My mom was an Italian immigrant, so she taught all her children Italian, yes.”

Matt sits himself next to Bucky, and they just stare at each other for a moment, until Matt takes Bucky’s hand in his.

“That’s cool.”

Bucky squeezes his hand tight.

“I guess it is.”


	2. Extract 2- Thanksgiving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're taking a road trip

“Are we there yet?”

Steve breathed deeply through his nose and pursed his lips. Bucky knew the full minute of silence was too good to be true. He glanced up to the mirror- he could see Nina wistfully looking out of the window at the blurred scenery; Matt was fast asleep, head tilted back and mouth open, books open in his lap. _The Last of the Mohicans,_ and _Uncas: First of the Mohegans_ were now littered with brightly coloured post-its, and there were paragraphs of analysis in tiny scrawl down every margin. Matt had explained his complex colour co-ordination system, Bucky had just nodded along.

None of the page corners were folded, though.

“Does it look like we’re there yet?”

“…We could be.”

Bucky looked to Steve, who didn’t take his eyes off the road, but there was a small smile playing on his lips. Bucky sighed and rolled his shoulder. They had been in the car for a long while, to be fair to Nina.

“You want to play a game?”

“We already played all of them!” She whined loudly and glared at Bucky. Fair enough.

“Don’t wake up your brother,” Steve chastised, and immediately Nina turned to Matt, giving him the once over before looking at the back of Steve’s head again, like she was weighing up the pros and cons of waking up Matt. On one hand, she’d have someone _funner_ to talk to, instead of just her dads, and maybe the two of them could join forces and beg for their turn to choose the radio channel to be shifted up by half an hour, but on the other, she’d be ignoring Steve.

Lindsey had told Bucky to cherish these days where his kids still did what they were told. Freddie had been a nightmare during her teenage years, apparently.

It seemed Matt was still getting used to the idea that he was allowed to _be,_ let alone be a nightmare.

_“So,” Steve said, filling the gap in conversation that had occurred as their children stuffed their face with dumplings. “It’s thanksgiving next week, and you guys both have a long weekend.”_

_“Yup! At school, Tia said that she’s going to her grandma’s and grandpa’s house, and all her cousins come, and they eat the biggest turkey in the whole of America.” Nina only swallowed her mouthful when she finished talking, which earned her a reproachful look from Bucky. She didn’t notice._

_“And then Danny asked what WE do for thanksgiving, and I said I don’t know because we haven’t done that before with all of us.”_

_Steve gave Bucky a pained look, as if he was guilty for Nina not having done thanksgiving, but Bucky only half paid attention to it- he was instead looking at Matt, who seemed to be trying to break up the vegetables in his stew into the smallest pieces possible._

_“What did your mum do for thanksgiving, Matt?” Bucky asked quietly, and Matt blinked up at him like he’d just realised he was part of this conversation._

_“I-” His voice faltered, but nobody said anything as he took a deep breath and tried again. “My mum didn’t really like the idea of thanksgiving in the traditional sense. We’d have nice food and be glad for each other, but, um, what with the history-” he trailed off and ended with a shrug._

_“Oops.” Steve and Bucky didn’t even have time for one of their silent conversations before both of them were kicked into action by Nina’s guilty sound- she and her surroundings were covered in milk and stew._

_It wasn’t until later that evening that Steve got a chance to talk to Matt._

_“You know,” Steve said, as he sat down on the edge of the bed, only fully resting against the headboard with his legs stretched out when Matt shifted, as an indication that Steve could. “My mum only used to do thanksgiving so that I would be able to say at school that my family did. It would have been very un-American not to.”_

_“And that was a big deal back then. Still kinda is.” Matt’s voice was small, like he was expecting this to turn into a telling-off even then._

_“Exactly. So we had a roast chicken, and said our prayers that we were thankful for each other and enjoyed just, being together, which I think is really the important thing, wouldn’t ya say?”_

_Matt nodded hesitantly, like he didn’t really want to believe what Steve was saying._

_“In this family, we do things together or not at all, ya hear me? So if you don’t wanna do thanksgiving properly ‘cause it makes you uncomfortable, then we don’t- we’ll have a celebration of our own instead, because there’s always reason for that.”_

_Matt had hugged Steve so hard that, had he not had the serum, his ribs would have broken._

“Papa?”

“How about this,” Bucky said, untacking the map from the dashboard, shaking his head slightly to clear his thoughts. He had the route memorised before they even got in the car, and they had the GPS if they needed it- but it wasn’t a road trip without an old school map. “You be navigator, you look at where we are and where we gotta go and give Dad instructions.”

Nina took the map and spread it across her lap and Matt’s. He didn’t even stir.

“You were being navigator and telling Dad where to go. Dad told you to stop being a backseat driver.”

Bucky resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and Steve laughed loudly- which was enough to wake up Matt. He blinked blearily down at the new item in his lap, then at Nina like he was checking she was still there, and finally to Bucky.

“Are we there yet?” He grumbled through a yawn, and Bucky buried his face in his hands. Why did they decide a road trip on thanksgiving weekend was a good idea?

“Nope! Dad says _we get there when we get there_ and Papa says _does it look like we’re there yet-”_ Bucky had to give it to Nina, her impressions weren’t half bad. “-do you see the nonsense I have to put up with?”

She sounds very much like Pepper talking about Tony- she even does the hand gestures and exaggerated sigh. Matt blearily grins at her- he hasn’t completely woken up yet. He’d been too excited to sleep last night, and now he was suffering for it.  

“So you’re navigator now, huh? So we get there faster?”

“Yup!”

“So where are we?”

Nina’s smile drops, and she looks down at the map, biting her lip.

“Um, Daddy, where are we going again?”

“Uncasville- it’s in Conneticut.”

“You put a red sticker by it, remember kiddo?” Bucky chimes in when Nina continues to frown.

“Found it! You know, these maps are very silly, you can’t zoom in so the writing is _teeny_ and you can’t see!”

Matt pulls a face and looks at Bucky.

“Now I know what you mean when you say I make you feel old.”

Bucky doesn’t get a chance to respond before Nina grabs Matt’s attention again, and the two of them are having an intense discussion about whether they’d rather encounter a whale sized bird or a hundred bird sized whales. How they got to this was beyond either of the adults in the car- their kids were always eleven steps in front of them- Bucky and Steve would catch up, and by that time they would have looped back to step seven.

Becca and Harriet had been like that- Lindsey had always insisted that they were telepathic, because they’d seem to have full discussions without either of them saying a word.

Bucky’s seen weirder than telepaths. It could have been possible.

“Why’s it called Uncasville?” Ah, so they’ve done a full circle.

“Named after Uncas, the 17th Century sachem of the Mohegan tribe.”

“What’s a sachem?”

“Paramount chief of the tribe.”

“Like Big Chief in Peter Pan.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Bucky doesn’t have to look at Matt to know he’s making the face- the same slightly disappointed face he makes whenever there’s blatant racism in a film he loves. _Nothing’s unproblematic,_ he’d said to Bucky with a defeated kind of sigh after he explained that Cho and Chang were both Korean last names.

“Hey, Matt,” Nina was scrunching up her nose, like she always did when she was worried. “You’re not gonna be sachem right?”

“No, I’m not?”

Matt looked at Bucky- _why would she think that?_ Bucky shrugged his shoulders.

“So you are coming home with us after when we come home?”

“Why wouldn’t I be coming home?”

Steve very slowly turned down the radio so he and Bucky could hear their conversation more clearly- Nina was mumbling into her hands, and Matt was being equally quiet. Neither of them seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t say anything.

“Because we did thanksgiving on the wrong day so we could still be with everyone and also come to the museum where you’re from this weekend so you can learn about your family but what if you learn about them and you like them more than us so you stay there and don’t come home?”

In the silence, Bucky could hear Matt’s heart breaking.

“I’m not learning about my family, I’m learning about my people- where I came from- like you learn about Russia and p-,” Matt seemed to choke on his words before continuing, “and Bucky learned about Italy and Steve learned about Ireland. _You_ are my family and _you_ are who I belong with, so you don’t gotta worry about me going anywhere.”

Nina looks at Matt with wide eyes, before hesitantly holding out her pinky finger.

“Promise?”

“Promise.” Matt curls his finger around Nina’s, and the two do some sort of long winded handshake which leaves Nina laughing so Bucky assumes everything is okay.

“Also,” Matt says when Nina finally stops giggling, “I’m not from _a museum,_ like Steve and Bucky, we’re just _going_ to the Tantaquidgeon museum- I’m not that old!”

“You’re kinda old,” Nina says with a shrug, before looking down at the map. Matt looks positively scandalised.

“Matty, do you think there are whales in this bit?” Nina looks up at her brother expectantly, pointing at the blue section of the map next to the road they’ve highlighted.

“Probably not.”

“Why?”

Bucky tuned out before the continuous _why_ questions drove him up the wall- he loved Nina’s curiosity, but being in a car for more than an hour made him antsy now, especially when he wasn’t driving. He’ll ask Steve if they can pull over and switch for a while at the next gas station, then he’ll have something to focus on at least.

They do get there eventually, and the drive is only four hours but somehow it feels longer than any of the mission journeys they’ve been on- maybe because, despite Nina’s best efforts, the closer they get, the more withdrawn Matt becomes.

Steve and Nina are the first to jump out of the car when they get to the museum, and they’re met by a personal guide (Pepper’s doing, of course).

Nina’s greeting is nothing but polite, if a little impatient.

“Excuse me, could you direct me to the rest rooms?”

Bucky slips on his flesh sleeve, and turns to Matt, who is staring at the car door handle like it’s going to make his decision for him.

“If you want to turn around and go home, we turn around and go home.” Bucky’s tone is firm but soft, and it makes Matt frown.

“But we came all this way-”

“So we can learn about _your_ history. This is for _you,_ and if you wanna turn on your heels and sprint back home, then we’ll be right there with you.”

“But-”

“And if we’re half way home, and you decide that you want to turn around again and come back, then we’ll do that too.”

Bucky followed Matt’s gaze out of the car window. Nina and Steve had reappeared, and Nina was excitedly chatting away to their guide, wheeling in her chair in circles instead of jumping up and down to prove her excitement.

“In this family, we do things together,” Matt whispered, and yanked forcefully at the door handle.

“What was that, bud?”

Matt leapt out of the car, and pulled Bucky’s door open, holding out his hand.

“Stay with me?”

“You don’t gotta ever ask me to do that for you,” Bucky promised, squeezing Matt’s hand and shrugging his back pack onto his shoulder before slamming the car door shut behind him. “Not ever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a short thing to get the creative juices flowing, really. I'm struggling at the moment, despite having everything planned out.
> 
> It's definitely not as good as other chapters, so there'll probably be an edit later, but for now...that's it


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